SimCity 4 Retail Patch v1.0.272.0 [US]

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- Zoom and rotation switching is faster in all cases, due to changes that made building graphics loading more conservative.
- AutoZoomChange:off
- Simulation and Frame rates in general are faster for many cities, due to bug fixes and performance improvements related to the traffic simulation and neighbor deals.
- The application's memory cache is more aggressively reduced at runtime, so that memory will be freed for other uses, resulting in less paging on systems with less memory.
- Control-Shift-Alt-S (or holding down Alt while clicking on the city save button) saves the city without updating the region thumbnail and should significantly improve the game save time, especially on memory-strapped
systems.
- Game default detail options have been made more conservative with respect to memory and processor speed. Because of the additions to the graphics options, your previous settings will be lost and reset with new default settings.
- The game no longer forces itself into the underground view unless you have explicitly picked an underground tool.
- Three new graphics options have been added under in-game graphics settings.
They are: building detail, texture quality and building load speed. These options are initially set at conservative defaults and can be altered for your specific machine needs. Building detail will enable you to load one building style set per rank. (1 set=low, 2 sets=medium, all 3 sets=high). Texture quality will alter the textures based on the zoom level. Building load speed will enable tuning options for the rate at which buildings are loaded in memory. For example, at the low setting buildings will appear at a slower rate but there will be greater responsiveness to the mouse and scroll movements.

Caveats

- Very large and dense cities with complex road and underground networks will continue to be a problem with computers that have less than 256MB of RAM unless the user turns graphics options down via the options dialogs and turns down day/night transitions via the God menu. It wouldn't hurt to turn down audio options via the options dialog as well in these cases. The immense scope of SimCity makes it difficult for it to run quickly at full breadth on machines with lower RAM, particularly when running complex operating systems such as Windows XP.
- In our efforts to increase the speed and responsiveness of zoom changes and scrolling we had to make some trade offs. You will notice quicker response when changing zooms but one trade off is that the back ground loader will take more time loading in buildings. The result is that when loading there may be black boxes in view. This issue can be controlled to some degree by adjusting the new graphics option, "building load speed", to better suit the performance of your specific machine.

Additional Update fixes

- Addressed Life Expectancy issue in how averages were calculated. This solves problems with sudden drops and oddly low values.
- Addressed commuting issues related to highways and double counting on subways.
- Addressed twitching for left hand turning vehicles.
- Addressed graph (jobs & population) with multiple occupant types to toggle each type or with hover query.
- Improved art for the heavy truck (industrial prop). It was previously rendered with 8 bit alpha instead of 1 bit giving it a large blocky black background.
- Addressed neighbor deal status on rail query.
- Streamlined garbage graph to display just the current capacity of landfills and garbage produced by the city.
- Addressed several issues in highway connections to neighboring cities.
- Addressed issue for airports and seaports initially showing up distressed.
- Alphabetized region names in the UI.
- Addressed issue regarding incorrect lot texture on a high wealth residential
building and a texture with a high wealth commercial building.
- Update for a connection-related neighbor deal problem associated with water.
- Change neighbor deal to allow deals to continue for a short period of time even if the buying city runs out of money. This addresses the "neighbor deal cancelled too quickly" issue.
- Added a desirability threshold to prevent abandonment if lots have high desirability.
- Increased RCI demand max (allowing the largest structures to build easier). This is better known as the Stage 8 issue.
- Addressed airport queries to report efficiency.
- Addressed landfills to combine easier if drawn adjacent to each other. Still problematical if drawn between two landfills, so try adding them one at a time.
- Lowered the alpha on distressed and abandoned so cities don't look so devastated.
- Addressed Neighbor deal issues (escalating rates, canceling during suspension and canceling during obliteration).
- Addressed issue of fires starting with missile silo while game was paused, Also helps stop fires starting from other special effects while game is paused.
- Addressed issues related to power line occupant leaks that were causing some problems with saved games.
- Tax fields in budget can now be entered directly in addition to using the spinners.
- Addressed incorrect links to budget in multi-neighbor deal messages.
- Addressed cost escalation to network tiles after drawing bridges/tunnels.
- Addressed updates for automata (less getting stuck in intersections, better synching of lights, better stopping for trains).
- Addressed issue for "go to disaster" link if auto go to disasters is turned off in options.
- Addressed some network draw problems related to drawing highways over other networks diagonally.
- Added support for crash report generator. This enables the creation of a log file if the game happens to shut down unexpectedly.
- Addressed issue for flipped network piece (two diagonal roads against orthogonal T intersection).
- Improved support for cities built with plugins opened by users who do not have those plugins.
- Control-Alt-Shift-X will bring up cheat panel as stated in the strategy guide.
- Lowered 'hotspot' effect for fires. This results in less fires breaking out.
- Lowered frequency of busses (visual automata only) in large cities.

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This patch still doesn't fix the money system in the game, cuz it sucks.There is no way to play this game without a cheat or trainer to help you with the money.I am a newer player,true,but I know a guy who was just about an expert at SimCity 3000 and he can't play Sim4 without cheating either.Could we please have a difficulty slider or something????

ALL OF YOU SUCK.(i don't mean to offend you, but it is true)I've been a fan of sim-based games ever since SimCity 1 was created. I've built numerous cities in SimCity 3000 that reached a population of 1 850 000 + habitants, with a 550 + cash flow every year. And if you wan't me to send you my SC3000 cities i'll be happy to do it, and you know what? I don't care if this game is harder or not, pretty soon i'll send you my SC4 cities too...Learn how to play before you say the game sucks, cos in reality, the ones who suck are you.(look, i felt the same way about some games, for me Nedd for speed : HP2 was a real pain in the but, but after some practice i managed to beat the game. Is like UT2003, you can't expect to win a godlike match the first game you play...)

i meant a 550 000 + cash flow.I think all of you understood, but i thought it was better to mention this before some joker makes fun of it.btw - if you wan't to know of a maxis game that sucks, than that would be the Sims. not becouse of the game itself, but becouse of the numerous packs there are for it, instead of a brand new game...

I know it’s long but READ this:I, like others, have always loved SimCity and played for hours but was still unable to finish a city without cheating. Until, finally in SC3K, I realised a fundamental flaw in the basic structure on the game.In real life, a city is usually built somewhere where some kind of economic advantage exist such as a natural resource, at a strategic place for defence or trade, and so on. In other words, a city is built where money can possibly be made. It’s really rare that, like in SimCity, some rich wannabe mayor just walks on some open terrain, thinks to himself “hey, this looks like a good place to start a city!” , and buys the land to built his own city!!!A) This is why you always lose:When you initially start the city and you are offered the choice of "easy", "medium", or "hard", the difference being the amount of money you have to start the city, most people will pick “easy” and start with 500 000$. They then spend most of that money to build a cool looking city. What’s not so cool is now they don’t have enough money and are plunging for the red. The good news is you get a bunch of offers to built army bases, max security prisons, missile silos, etc, that provide you with income. The bad news is at that point the few hundreds you’ll make with those deal won’t be enough to cover your thousands and more of outcome. Then your genius adviser tell you to reduce services and raise taxes which reduces your population and brings in even less money in!!B) This is how you can win without cheating:PICK “hard”. You won’t have that much cash to start with but that’s great because it will limit your building to a strict minimum. I know, that sucks, the whole point of the game is to build the city right? But wait: first you need a source of income. Pretty fast, you’ll be close to broke and then offers for army bases and etc will start coming in. Am I telling you to purposely get your small city almost broke??? Yes, exactly! W

Continue from last post that was cut:Pretty fast, you’ll be close to broke and then offers for army bases and etc will start coming in. Am I telling you to purposely get your small city almost broke??? Yes, exactly! Why? Because at this point, when you accept the business deals, the few hundreds coming in WILL be enough to support your city (because it won’t be as huge as in example A). Finally, you’ll have this needed source of income to fuel your city and can now build as you please. Of course, when your city will be huge enough to support itself, just bulldoze the army base and etc, and you’re set.I know some big shots will say they can win without the business deals but for me, every time I did this thing it ALWAYS worked. Questions? nicolas_falardeau@hotmail.com

The game rocks but it's DAMN SLOW!!I can hardly go beyond Pop.1000. That SUCKS!!!!I've Got Problems With Other Games.Can SomeOne PLS HELP ME OUT!!I.D-harry_hercules@yahoo.co.inP.S U Can Catch Me If I am On ChatPls Use The Words GMIUC so i'll know u.Thx

Why the **** is everybody (well many) saying that SimCity 4 sucks? It's great! The only reason you think it sucks is becouse you haven't played it more than 0.614 times! So before you people start critisizing this game, well, PLAY IT!